What is a sin of commission?

Issachar was like “a strong ass, couching down between two burdens.” What two burdens, do YOU, if unsaved, carry? First burden—sins of commission. Second burden—sins of omission. What do these long words mean? Sins of commission are the wrong things which you have done. Sins of omission are those things which you ought to have done, but neglected to do.

While not a ruler or leader of the people of God, nor the company as a whole, nor yet knowing much about the anointed priest drawing near into the presence of God, all saints belong to the company of the saints of God, and all are God's people in this world. All of the saints are of equal status under the eye of God. If one should sin, "through ignorance....." (saints of God never commit wilful sin, for which there is no forgiveness; but we may through inadvertence at a weak moment sin against God (1 John 2:1), but it is in inadvertence or ignorance), ".....against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and be guilty....." (that is sins of commission, the things which we ought not to have done but have done, rather than sins of omission, those things which we ought to have done, but have not; thus here definite offences are in view, which we can so easily be guilty of if we allow the flesh to work within us and to spring out into evidence, for the flesh can do nothing but sin, it is not subject unto the law of God, neither can be - Rom. 8:7),

As for special revelation, Scripture is full of definitions for sin, which all boil down to breaking God's laws or going against God's will. Summed up, these definitions might be stated: Sin is proud, independent rebellion against God in active or passive form.

To put it in scriptural terms, "[.] sin is lawlessness" (1 John 14). Also, "all wrongdoing is sin" (1 John 5: 17).

Examples of actively breaking God's laws or doing wrong can be summed up quite well in reviewing the Ten Commandments. Active sin includes such things as lying, stealing, murder and adultery. Passive sin is subtler, because it may not involve actions but may instead be a matter of attitude or thought. We can passively sin as our thoughts draw us into lust, selfishness, greed, jealousy, pride, indifference and lack of love.

James describes passive sin when he says, "Anyone, then, who knows to do good as he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins" (Jas. 4:17). Passive sin is summed up in the attitude that says to God or others, "Get lost, you're cramping my style. I'm too busy for you."

131 I notice some more objections. A great deal is said about being innocent. Scripture never speaks of any one being innocent in God's sight (I am not speaking, of course, of unfallen Adam). It is unfortunate when the whole argument depends on what is not found in scripture. God never declares a man innocent; nor does it, as we have already seen, ever speak of the righteousness of Christ; yet all the argument of my adversaries is, that man must have the latter in order to be the former. We are guilty of sins of omission and commission. For my sins of commission it is clear there can be no doing, but atonement, because I ought not to have done the things; and here Christ cannot do anything for me. I have stolen: He has put my sin away. What has He to do for me? If the sin is put away, I am guiltless. So that we have one kind of righteousness as to these; another as to sins of omission. Is this scriptural? But as to these — Christ, by His life, has perfectly made them up, they tell us, so that I am absolutely innocent, "as pure as the majesty of heaven." And then Christ dies for what? Here, consequently, I look in vain for scripture. The passage, "Who can say anything to the charge of God's elect?" is none. Why is the question, mark, "lay anything to the charge?" Now, I say, if Christ has died for me, none can lay anything to my charge. Dare any one say they can? If not, I cannot be charged with the slightest stain of guilt. Whatever I was in sin, Christ has died for, and I am cleared from all charge — what they call innocent. This they deny. If not, let them admit it. If they deny it, they destroy the value of Christ's death. If they admit it, all my adversary's reasoning is false. No, they demand an additional quantum of merit, and hold that man is not cleared from charge by Christ's death. I repeat, if he is, the whole reasoning falls through as false. This controversy arose from a preacher stating that besides Christ's blood, and regeneration, it was written on heaven's gates, "This do and live," and meritorious righteousness must be gained by doing. That is the doctrine stated by them.

Thus, then, Leviticus 10 opens with positive sin, and closes with negative failure. Nadab and Abihu offered "strange fire;" and Eleazar and Ithamar were unable to eat the sin offering. The former was met by divine judgement; the latter, by divine forbearance. There could be no allowance for "strange fire." It was positively flying in the face of God's plain commandment. There is, obviously, a wide difference between a deliberate rejection of a plain command, and mere inability to rise to the height of a divine privilege. The former is open dishonour done to God; the latter is a forfeiture of one's own blessing. There should be neither the one nor the other, but the difference between the two is easily traced.

"Sin" is that which at the fall of Adam gained an entrance into the world. Just as the poison of a snake, once injected into la man's body, will run through his whole system doing its deadly work, so sin - the virus of that old serpent the devil - has permeated man's moral being to his ruin. The result of this is "all have sinned." "Sins," of thought, word, or act, whether of omission or commission, are chargeable to each of us.

Knowing this let us be careful to do it, for a very striking statement closes our chapter. Sin is not only the doing of that which is wrong: it is also the not doing of that which we know to be right. Hence to know is a great responsibility.

The child of God who walks in godly fear, trusting the Lord, planning as under Him, will constantly remember that all depends on the Lord and on His will. It is a wholesome habit to add always, when we speak of the future, "if the Lord will and we live"; this is pleasing in His sight and a testimony of our submission to Him and dependence on Him. Otherwise it is the boasting, vain-gloriousness of the self-secure world, which boasts and plans, without thinking of God and His will. The last verse must not be detached from what goes on before. "To him, therefore, that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Sin does not consist only in doing evil, but if we do not the good we know, it is also sin. If we do not act according to the fact that we are entirely dependent on God as to the future, we sin.

There is no mistaking such language as this. Every nook and cranny of our moral being should be filled with devotion to God, and from this should flow unselfish love to all others. But "what hast thou done?" Who amongst us would dare to affirm that he has so lived? What then? Rom. 3:22 puts us all in our place: "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." As the Prayer Book expresses it: "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us."

Some will doubtless affirm that they are not so bad as others. So said the Pharisee of Luke 18. But the question still remains, Have you sinned at all? I have lying before me a curious calculation cut from the pages of a magazine. One sin in thought, one in word, and one in deed, committed daily, amounts to 10,950 sins in ten years, 21,900 sins in twenty years, and so on. Thus the youth of 20 has 21,900 sins standing to his debit in the book of God, reckoning upon the low basis of one sin in thought, one in word, and one in deed daily. 21,900 sins! This is a pretty serious matter is it not? Young man, is it not time for you to seek divine pardon?

It is a remarkable thing that as a rule sins of omission trouble us far less than sins of commission, yea oftentimes trouble us not at all. Yet how serious they are.